So, uh, yeah. Then I come offstage and although I’m a bit pissed off I’m philosophical about it because that’s what I did in college and it sure doesn’t prepare you for any other job. Keyboard-dude from Morbius buys my CD (first copy of The Old Album sold to anyone in the world) and this cheers me up quite a bit, and then the slightly camp older barman buys another one and, as I always do, I take this as a good sign. I have to, you see. He even wants me to sign it and I feel a bit silly putting my jobseeker’s allowance name down so I do a goofy drawing too just to show I’m an artist. He asks me how much I want for it and I don’t understand the currency because it’s numerical and so I ask how much Morbius are charging for theirs and then ask for two thirds of that sum and then he gives me the full whack anyway in a manner that suggests that he doesn’t want to argue about it. Then Morbius play and I find myself getting into the thing they do between songs where Bones starts talking random crap at the audience, sometimes amusingly and sometimes totally randomly, and then the rest of the band crash into the next song whether he sounds like he’s finished or not, which can be very funny. All the time I’m feeling sorry for Phil because he’s got sleep deprivation, fading drug psychosis and a room full of nobody at all to take into SPACE. Sometimes that sort of shit can do you a favour though, and it must have because he comes on and does the best set I’ve ever seen him do, and I’ve now seen him do a lot of really good ones. It’s only now that I realise that all the fucking about with the lights earlier on in the day is because they have a really good set of lights and MFU looks like a ASTRAL HEFNER MOTHERFUCKER and not some dude who has to TAKE SHIT FROM MORONS IN DIFFERENT-COLOURED HATS IN A FUCKING JAM FACTORY just to feed his kids and bring us DER SPACE MUSIK. And I’ve got it all on video, or most of it anyway. He does this brilliant new tune called Dead Astronaut or something where he puts on a simple paper mask that makes his face look blank and then pretends to float lifelessly as his machines bleep and bloop along, seemingly without purpose. It’s a nothing idea but it’s so effective, like Japanese theatre or something. He does a lot of upbeat, catchy stuff that any consumer could relate to too, a lot more polished like he’s really got his chops together. His theremin sounds decreasingly like a WOW MACHINE and more like a judiciously used favourite colour in his sonic palette. I start thinking about how maybe MFU isn’t such an acquired taste anymore and how he could really rock something like All Tomorrow’s Parties or whatever, and I mean that in a good way. People would love it. SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL SPACEMAN, I say. Finally DJ Dolomite, who looks a bit like Simon (fuck it, he is Simon OK?) gets up and starts wading through a charmingly all-over-the-place set that defies my trainspotting by and large. Me and Morbius and Sandro all play table football and I drink about a zillion corn beers because the fridge never empties because these sophisticated Europeans understand that THE ARTIST’S PAIN manifests itself as THIRST. I feel kind of stupid and cheap though, because they have Orval (plus various Chimays) behind the bar and this is about my favourite beer in the whole world, and yet I don’t drink a single one. Then some young geezer with long hair who is very tall starts talking to me and I can’t remember if he didn’t speak English or whether I had lost the ability myself but we couldn’t seem to communicate whatsoever, and yet he still wanted to stand very close to me indeed. Phil wandered up guilelessly and I pointed at him, and then at the bloke by way of introductions. Matey ignored Phil and continued to set up camp in my personal space. I was too drunk for diplomacy so I wandered off somewhere else. Matey appeared at my shoulder. I wandered off somewhere else quite fast. Instantaneous materialisation of Homo Europus in that zone too. I sprinted for the balcony to escape, only realizing as I got there that if I leant on the railing and looked out into the night sky I might as well be wearing a powder-blue off-the-shoulder cocktail dress, even if the available vista mainly featured staggering punks and junkies jacking up rather than elegant examples of topiary. Too late! He was behind me! I pegged it away with wild eyes, and a chase ensued until I made it to the safety of the backstage area. Thereupon Phil and I rolled the only joint I smoked over the weekend, and afterwards I was too fucked to tell Simon (who was being held to DJ ransom by a small group of dancing people on ecstasy) that I was going to call it a day, let alone go back out and have to deal with HAIR-BOY’S PURSUIT OF WHATEVER. I go upstairs, climb into my bunk and crash out in about Â¾ of a second.

So where was I? Ah yes, there I was, on tour in Europe, reading a book. After a while Sandro lays out some food in the dressing room area, and I haven’t eaten all day because I’ve been saving myself for this because Simon has told me that the food is really good. However, this isn’t the main meal, this is just the “get-in” food â€“ a quick snack in case you’ve been in a transit van for 9 hours with no Swiss currency. Now I am properly starving, and this food looks far more than edible to me, almost like a table full of sex or something, because it’s just the sort of thing I like. There’s 3 different types of bread, and 3 different types of cheese, and four different types of cold meats, and pickles, fruit, pretzels, chocolate, sweet and savoury biscuits, orange juice etc etc. There’s even nuts. Then he brings in the beer, and its like two cases of special corn beer. But because I’m a nim-num, I get stuck into the beer (obviously) but I decide to save myself for the evening meal because we’re due to get that in about an hour or so at 7:30PM. As it happens we get caught in that Moebius (or should that be Morbius?) strip of the time continuum known in the rock and roll world as the soundcheck and Simon ends up driving round town to look for bass guitars and we don’t get to eat until about 11PM (doors open at 10PM and there ain’t no curfew). Dinner is a kind of amazing experience for me because we are all very politely asked to come downstairs to the restaurant bit of the venue and there is wine and you have to choose from a menu and not for the first time or last time in the weekend I get the distinct feeling that I have woke up in the wrong life or something. Despite all this luxury, and perhaps a little bit because of it, I am getting pretty edgy because I’ve been hanging around for hours and the 60 or so people who are hanging around outside the venue caning it look as though they might just have spent any money they had on beers and stuff rather than saving some to pay to see Brain of Morbius, Pete UM and The Man from Uranus. Oh yeah, that’s right, I’m billed as Pete Um and described as being “like a rough or snotty version of Billy Bragg”, while Phil is compared to Stockhausen. So, I’m a bit freaked out because I’ve had no food, I’m on first and there’s no one there. Then this belligerent and skanky old drunk with one eye comes in and pulls up a chair next to me and starts barking in German, or possibly dog. His voice has an amazing tone â€“ incredibly loud and piercing and I keep trying to switch my DV camera on to capture it. Eventually he fucks off leaving his empty beer bottle on the table. I ask if this is the local mentalbrau and the soundman tells me that it’s actually quite a good beer. Everyone eats and leaves before I get the sense and the courage to ask where mine is, with the result that I end up eating alone at the end of a massive table, wolfing down my food because I think I’m due onstage about an hour ago. When I get back upstairs I see that there is indeed only about four paying customers in this massive room and I start to feel like a bit of an international let-down and the sort of Gareth Gates-style urge/shameless need to entertain just drains out of me, leaving a sort of resigned twat in his thirties who’s eaten a bit too quickly. Nevertheless Simon is DJ-ing that UNKLE remix of Can’s Vitamin C and that kind of jumpstarts me a bit and we have an amusing conversation about how Phil got asked to play theremin with Then Jericho at Glastonbury and Simon, who’s usually got some rock tour story for every occasion, relates how he heard that they would get off the bus unless the coke was there etc, and indeed Phil says that he ended up doing some coke in their van with them, and then they went on (without Phil) and got booed off after two songs. The idea of Phil doing coke in a van at Glastonbury with Then Jericho is just too perfect for me. So anyway, I change into my suit and mooch about for a bit, mainly staring at the kids getting bombed outside and finding only seedy lumps in the sieve of my perception. There’s a balcony that you can stand on and look down onto the area in front of the building. This balcony has a kind of magnetic draw to it and I notice that Sandro keeps going over to stand there and look a bit depressed for a while. The PA is booming out at these disaffected Swiss youth but no one even glances in the direction of the building. The idea that this brilliant venue is being abused starts to swell out of all proportion in my mind, even though I’d probably be out there on the steps if I was a Swiss teen, and possibly even as an adult British male, and I get all saddened and deflated. For a little while we discuss the idea that I could sing from the balcony, which would have been fucking perfect in my little universe, but it proves too technically tricksome. Eventually I go on and perform to the other bands, the venue staff, a crazy punk who tries to get me to smoke some weed before I’ve even begun, and a few others. I sort of start OK and finish OK but there’s a fairly long section in the middle where I lose all heart and soul. I also leave out five or six songs so as not to prolong the agony. As usual these days, my dancing skills desert me apart from during Holy Fire. Simon and I share a theory that this is due to DANCING DAD SYNDROME, whereby the fact that we have done our silly business as humans by procreating has sapped us of our cosmick male mystery which makes us cool and responsive to rhythm and is needed to attract wimmin and their wombs etc. In the past I fancied myself as a mover, but somewhere along the line the moves just moved off somewhere else. Simon reckons that if he had gone out the night that Daniel was born he would have discovered that he had ceased to feel the groove within himself, and danced instead like someone’s Dad. After all, why are so many professional dancers homosexual? You can’t hide from science. OK, more in a bit. I was only away for a day and a half so I’ll run out of this nonsense soon.

It’s a crazy old world out there. First the Taliban start bombing 2000 year old Buddhist statues, then the U.S.A starts bombing everywhere else (not that they haven’t been at this since WW2) and then I read in Now â€“ “Britain’s bestselling celebrity magazine”) that Jessie Wallace has had breast reduction surgery. Fucked up times, man.

I think I missed the mark with my description of the nerdy guys on Mill Road the other day. It comes across as me sneering at the dweebish, but it was actually meant to be at my expense, honest.

Unusual vinyl windfall today. Striding beerwards towards the Co-op at about 5:45PM, I am surprised to see a pile of thirty or forty records dumped outside that charity shop that’s next to The Cat Flap. Without noticeable hesitation, I head over to the pile. It’s pretty good. I take about half the stuff.

Eighty-two quid in the book. Would have been another Â£48 on top of that but for lack of free 7″s, postcards, inner sleeves etc. Obviously it’s not cool to steal charitable donations but something tells me that that pile wouldn’t have been there in the morning. Somebody would have nicked them.